The present invention relates to a housing system for safety-relevant control devices in vehicles, comprising a receptacle attached to the car body and a housing part that can be inserted into the receptacle.
In order to ensure the safe and reliable function of occupant restraint systems such as seatbelt tensioners and airbags in a particular vehicle model, it is necessary that the control device intended for that particular vehicle model is, in fact, installed. Inadvertent exchange of the control device can have the consequence that, due to the different vehicle-specific data and/or due to a different directionality of the sensors, the occupant restraint system is deployed or locked too soon, too late or not at all. In order to prevent such confusion, until now, coding has been provided in the form of a vehicle-specific plug and a complementary socket and/or in the form of a vehicle-specific coding pin that is located on the baseplate of the control device. These solutions have in common that, due to their relatively complicated handling, they are quite time-consuming during the assembly.
The invention provides a housing system for safety-relevant control devices that simply and reliably ensures that only the assembly of a control device intended for that particular vehicle model is possible. This is achieved with a housing system for safety-relevant control devices in vehicles by means of a receptacle attached to the car body and a housing part that can be inserted into the receptacle in that the receptacle and the housing part have complementary form-fitting elements that represent a coding and that engage each other when the housing part is mounted in the receptacle. The assembly is permitted to be completed only when the form-fitting elements of the receptacle and the housing part have fulfilled a predefined complementarity condition. Via the coding of the receptacles and the housing parts, a reliable as well as a simple and thus quickly implemented solution is provided which prevents a control device intended for another vehicle model from being installed.
Quick assembly is achieved with a preferred embodiment in that the housing part can be slid into the receptacle. Here, it is especially advantageous if the housing part can be latched into place in the receptacle so that the housing part can be attached in the receptacle in a simple manner.
According to another advantageous embodiment, it is provided that the housing part is made of plastics and the receptacle is made of metal. This provides a housing system whose metal component ensures a reliable protection for the control against damage of any kind and whose plastic housing component entails production-related advantages as well as cost advantages.
Another advantageous embodiment provides that the housing part and the receptacle have complementary plug connector elements. Here, it is especially advantageous if the plug connector elements are uniformly provided with contact assignments independent of the coding. With this embodiment, the electrical connection is made when the housing part is inserted into the receptacle. Since the coding function is fulfilled by the housing part and the receptacle, the contact assignment can be uniform and thus independent of the vehicle model.
According to another preferred embodiment, at least one secondary receptacle attached to the car body and one secondary housing part that can be inserted into the secondary receptacle are provided, a direction-dependent sensor being arranged in the secondary housing part. The secondary receptacle and the secondary housing part have complementary form-fitting elements that represent a coding and that engage each other during the assembly of the secondary housing part in the secondary receptacle. Here, too, assembly is permitted to be completed only when the form-fitting elements of the receptacle and the housing part have fulfilled a predefined complementarity condition. The assembly also determines the relative position of the housing part and thus of the direction-dependent sensor, to the housing part. Thus, for example, in the case of airbag systems with several airbags, it is ensured that the direction-dependent sensors are installed in the right place and with the right orientation in the vehicle. Consequently, different housing concepts for different direction-dependent sensors, which was necessary with the prior art airbag systems, have become superfluous.